


Be Gentle With Yourself

by jjmash



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjmash/pseuds/jjmash
Summary: Stiles used a pair of dull kitchen scissors and his dad’s electric razor to give himself a choppy buzz cut the morning of his mother’s funeral, and he kept his hair as short as possible after that. If anyone asked about his unchanging hair style (and not many people did), he brushed it off as a matter of maintenance.It wasn’t until after the Nogitsune had wreaked its destruction and left behind a pile of bodies with Stiles' name on their lips that he felt the need to get rid of his hair again.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 89





	Be Gentle With Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> CW: body dysmorphia, panic attacks, PTSD-like symptoms, dissociation
> 
> The ending is hopeful though?

“Be gentle with yourself,” his mother used to tell him as she tenderly untangled the knots in his unruly hair each night.

Later, when she couldn’t remember what it meant to take care of herself, Stiles had spent hours carefully brushing through his mother’s once-lustrous curls for her. He poured every ounce of his limited focus into the task, praying with every downward brush that she would get better. 

She didn’t.

Stiles used a pair of dull kitchen scissors and his dad’s electric razor to give himself a choppy buzz cut the morning of his mother’s funeral. It looked awful and messy but his dad didn’t say anything about it, just wordlessly took the razor from Stiles’ trembling hand and evened out the patchy hair as best he could. Stiles could still feel a few stray clippings tickling the back of his neck while the priest read the eulogy. 

Stiles kept his hair as short as possible after that. If anyone asked about his unchanging hair style (and not many people did), he brushed it off as a matter of maintenance. 

“Can you imagine _me_ with long hair? I’d never remember to take care of it,” Stiles would say in that self-deprecating tone that he always used when he didn’t want to discuss something, and whoever he was talking to would laugh and nod and forget all about it.

Scott was probably the only one who ever caught on to the truth – he could be unnervingly perceptive when he wanted to be – but even he didn’t really _know._ Stiles had divided his life into _with Mom_ and _without Mom,_ and his hair belonged solidly in the former; he couldn’t bear the thought of having to comb through the strands himself, knowing that she would never be there to gently tease out the knots for him.

Then Scott went and got himself turned into a werewolf, and that night of recklessness in the woods became the new dividing line of Stiles’ life. He started growing out his hair again, more due to a sudden lack of free time than as a conscious choice. When there were rogue alphas and psycho hunters and giant lizard things to deal with, basic stuff like haircuts tended to fall by the wayside. 

It wasn’t until after the Nogitsune had wreaked its destruction and left behind a pile of bodies with Stiles' name on their lips that he felt the need to get rid of his hair again.

It was late enough that it could be considered morning, and he’d gotten up to splash water on his face because the alternative was falling asleep. He hadn’t meant to look at himself in the mirror – he’d been actively avoiding all reflective surfaces for months – but he was tired and he forgot to lower his eyes as he finished toweling off. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, the top half of his face visible over the hem of the washcloth, and he saw the wrongness of his body reflected back at him in stark relief.

Stiles stared into the mirror for a long moment, taking in the deep purple smudges under his eyes and the unnatural sharpness of his cheekbones, and he reached up to tug at the untidy hair that he just knew shouldn’t be there. He had been thrown into a body that wasn’t really his and he couldn’t make any sense of it.

Stiles didn’t realize that he’d shattered the mirror until he looked down and saw the blood on his knuckles. He didn’t feel it. Why couldn’t he feel anything in this body?

Derek found him exactly like that some time later, staring down at his torn skin with a sort of detached curiosity, shards of glass and splatters of blood making the porcelain sink glitter with crimson. 

“Stiles?”

Stiles heard Derek’s alarmed cry as though it was coming from very far away. He let himself be pushed down onto the lid of the toilet seat and watched through half-lidded eyes as streaks of black flowed up Derek’s arms from where he was holding Stiles’ tattered hands in his. Stiles wished dimly that he could feel the familiar roughness of Derek’s hands.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he mumbled.

“What?” Derek asked him, his brow furrowed as he examined Stiles’ bloody knuckles.

“You don’t need to do that, I don’t have any pain.”

Now Derek looked even more concerned, peering up into Stiles’ eyes like he was searching for something. “I can feel the pain that I’m taking from you, Stiles. You don’t feel anything?”

Stiles shook his head, his vision going hazy around the edges. He tugged his hand out of Derek’s grasp; if the werewolf kept using his pain-stealing powers, there was a very real chance that Stiles would fall asleep right then and there. He couldn’t let himself sleep.

Derek didn’t try to take any more of his pain away, but he did manage to dig out the First Aid kit from under the bathroom sink and set to work disinfecting and bandaging the gashes that crisscrossed the backs of Stiles’ hands. 

“You probably need stitches for these,” he said, but Stiles just shook his head. It was better this way; he hoped the cuts would stay etched into his skin and leave dark, angry scars on this otherwise unblemished body. Stiles missed his scars, all of them tangible reminders of what life had been like before.

Derek came over a lot after that, sneaking in through Stiles’ bedroom window almost every night. Stiles was pretty sure his dad knew that Derek was there, but he didn’t bring it up. Not that Stiles actually saw his dad very often these days. When John was home Stiles stuck to his room as much as possible, unwilling to face his dad in a replica of the body that he’d nearly killed him in. 

Derek never said much, but he tried to convince Stiles to sleep as much as possible. He’d bring him cups of decaffeinated tea and prod him towards the bed until he laid down. Stiles would just stare up at his ceiling, tracing the cracks in the plaster until Derek left and he could move back to his desk chair and hunch over his computer, researching until the early morning hours. 

Knowledge was Stiles’ only weapon, and now that he had it back he was insatiable; he scoured the depths of the internet, ordering books from sketchy anonymous sellers and reading up on everything related to the supernatural that he could find. He had to be prepared for the next thing coming for them – and if he knew one thing for certain, it was that more things would come for them. 

Sleep was unimportant in the face of how much there still was to learn, Stiles told himself. He wasn’t afraid to go to sleep, he told himself, or of the nightmares that left him shaking and nauseous and made him want to crawl out of his own skin. Because how ridiculous would that be, to be afraid of something as inconsequential as sleep?

So Stiles only slept for an hour at a time, and it became a game to see how long he could stay awake before his body just shut down on him. No one seemed to notice how dark the circles around his eyes were becoming or how much muscle mass he was losing because he barely had the energy to stand anymore, much less go for runs. Stiles wasn’t upset that no one noticed. In fact, he would prefer for no one to ever take notice of him again. Fading away into nothingness sounded peaceful, and at least then he would be free of this body that he didn’t understand. 

Derek seemed determined not to let that happen, though. He slid open the window of Stiles’ bedroom and tumbled gracefully onto the carpet like he had every other night that week, seemingly unbothered by the way Stiles always ignored him. 

“What are you doing?” Derek asked, suddenly too close as he leaned over Stiles’ shoulder to peer at the computer screen.

“Homework,” Stiles mumbled, typing away in the open Word document.

Derek was quiet for a moment as he stared at Stiles’ fingers moving across the keyboard. “Stiles, you’re typing gibberish,” he said.

Stiles’ hands slowed on the keys. That couldn’t be right – he’d been working for well over an hour, he’d written nearly three pages. Stiles scrolled back to the top of the document and stared for a long moment at his blinking cursor. Where Stiles expected to see the title of his economics paper there was only a meaningless string of words. He kept reading, growing increasingly horrified as he realized that some of his words weren’t even real words, just jumbled up letters pushed into word-like shapes. 

His entire body was shaking, his vision blurring until the meaningless words on his computer screen just looked like black smudges. Strong arms were wrapping around him, pulling him out of his chair and down onto the ground. His long limbs thrashed wildly and involuntarily – god, this stupid fucking body – but Derek held him tight.

“It’s okay, Stiles, it’s okay.”

But nothing about this was okay. Nothing had been okay for a very long time. Stiles wriggled in Derek’s grasp until his arms were free enough to bring his hands up in front of his face. He tried counting his fingers but he couldn’t get his brain to provide the numbers, and his terror increased a hundredfold. And then Derek’s hands were covering his own, twining their fingers together and squeezing each one in turn as he counted them aloud. Stiles felt his breathing slow when Derek got to ten and he let himself go limp with relief and exhaustion.

Derek sat on the floor with Stiles cradled to his chest for a while longer, and then he picked him up as easily as if he were a child and carefully placed him in bed before crawling right in after him, trapping Stiles between the wall and Derek’s own hulking mass. Stiles curled up onto his side instinctively, his back pressed tight against Derek’s side in the bed that was really too small for the both of them. 

“Sleep,” Derek murmured, and Stiles did.

Stiles woke not to the violent beeping of his alarm but to the warm glow of sunlight falling across his pillow. He scrambled for his phone and was relieved to find that it was still the same day, that he hadn’t lost any time. It was late, though, and he’d missed at least his first three class periods. He wondered why his alarm hadn’t woken him up until he caught sight of the leather jacket folded neatly over his desk chair. 

When Stiles stumbled downstairs still in his pajamas, rubbing at his bleary eyes, it was to find Derek and his dad chatting amiably at the kitchen table over a tall stack of pancakes and a platter of bacon. He stood frozen in the doorway, certain that he was dreaming, until Derek noticed his presence and jerked his head toward the empty seat at the table. 

Stiles moved slowly to the open chair, confused and disoriented by the strangely domestic scene. Once seated, Derek piled a plate high with food and set it down in front of him in a silent command to eat something.

“Don’t worry, it’s turkey bacon,” John said with a smile, misinterpreting Stiles’ reluctance to eat as concern for his health.

Stiles stared down at his full plate and willed his hand to pick up the fork that was teetering precariously between the pancakes and the bacon. It was just a fork. He’d done this literally thousands of times; he’d sat down at this very table and stuffed his face without even thinking about it, just shoveled food into his mouth like it’d disappear if he didn’t eat it right that second. 

The gleaming silver fork was taunting him, lying right there like it was daring him to pick it up.

Stiles’ hands clenched into fists where they rested on the table and he glared down at them. The scabbed-over cuts from the shattered mirror stared back at him, but still the hands didn’t move. Stiles wanted to scream, or maybe cry, but his dad and Derek were right there, looking at him expectantly. How was he supposed to explain that he’d suddenly lost the ability to pick up a stupid fork?

A large hand swooped into Stiles’ line of sight and scooped up one of his own traitorous hands, gently unfurling the fisted fingers. Stiles looked up in surprise when Derek picked up the fork and placed it in Stiles’ hand, tenderly wrapping his fingers around Stiles’ so that they were both clutching the offending utensil. Derek waited a moment to be sure that Stiles wouldn’t drop it, and he felt the warmth of Derek’s palm against the back of his hand seeping deep into his bones, chasing away a chill he hadn’t noticed until it was suddenly gone. 

“Thanks,” he muttered, and Derek nodded. 

From there it was easy to follow the motions of cutting off pieces of pancake and moving them to his mouth, chew, swallow, repeat. He cleared his entire plate through rote muscle memory, until his fork scraped against the bare china and nothing was left but a puddle of sticky syrup.

His dad didn’t say anything when Derek followed him back to his room after the table was clear. Stiles was crowded back into his bed, and this time Derek wrapped one of his heavy arms around him. 

“You should sleep some more,” he said. 

Stiles, more alert than he had been in several weeks now that he’d slept and eaten a full breakfast, doubted that he’d even be able to close his eyes for longer than a minute. But Derek had helped him with the fork and apparently gotten him out of going to school for the day, so the least he could do was humor the guy. 

Stiles was surprised when he jerked awake nearly four hours later to find Derek’s arms still wound around him. 

“What day is it?” Stiles didn’t do a very good job of keeping the panic from his voice, flailing out of Derek’s arms to grab for his phone.

Derek tumbled out of bed but somehow managed to land on his feet. “It’s okay, you only slept for a few hours.”

Stiles’ heart was still thudding erratically and he felt a panic attack beginning to swell in his chest. He’d been having a nightmare, but he couldn’t remember what it was about. Was he still in it?

Derek’s arms were back around him in a second, pinning Stiles’ wrists in front of him. Stiles looked down at his hands to find himself clutching tufts of dark brown hair – _his_ hair. He hadn’t felt it being ripped from his own skull. 

“Off, off, off,” he mumbled, his voice increasing in volume involuntarily with every word. 

Derek just tightened his grip. “What, Stiles? What do you need?” 

Stiles knew he’d feel bad about the sheer terror in Derek’s voice when he was less panicky; he knew he was behaving like an insane person, and that it was freaking Derek out. He took in a few deep, shaking breaths, willing himself to calm down. 

“I can’t…” his voice was steadier now. “I need it _off.”_

Derek’s arms relaxed around him. “We can do that,” he said. 

He didn’t ask any questions, just rolled Stiles’ desk chair into the bathroom and sat him down on it in front of the cracked mirror. The shattered glass reflected pieces of Stiles back at him in odd, jagged patterns – for the first time since Stiles had been shoved into his new body, he saw a true reflection of himself.

Stiles let Derek run the electric clippers over his head again and again, watching the brown strands drift past him and settle onto the stark tile floor. Neither of them spoke, not until Stiles’ head was nearly bare and the air felt cool against his exposed scalp. Derek carefully brushed the remaining clippings from his shoulders, the other man’s fingers leaving tracks of fire where they touched Stiles’ skin and burning a little bit of the darkness out of him. 

“Better?”

Stiles ran a hand over his shorn hair and felt more like himself than he had since that first night in the woods.

“Better.”


End file.
